Hollywood Directors at DGA Pick Their Top Five Films
The Directors Guild of America (DGA) announced its nominees today for the 64th annual DGA Awards. We all know the drill for what comes next in such coverage; in fact, we can probably recite it […]
Polls
Hey, MTV: Stop Using Our Trademarked Name! Movie Smackdown®
UPDATE – JANUARY 3, 2012
MTV has backed off its use of “Movie Smackdown” after we made it clear that it was our trademarked name through this post and by official means. They have changed the name of their tournament competition to “Movie Brawl.” Still not sure how they could have let this happen, but at least they’ve done the right thing when their mistake was pointed out to them. […]
SmackPoll: Back-to-School Comedies
For some kids, the end of summer means the loss of freedom and an end to sleeping late. For others, it means a chance to go shopping for school supplies! Pens, notebooks, folders, and (if you’re old enough to remember the ’80s) a Trapper Keeper. Sure, school sucks hard at times, but it’s also a great opportunity for comedy. At least, Hollywood thinks so. […]
SmackPoll: Best Continuing Film Franchise
Here at Movie Smackdown! we spend a lot of time arguing about movies — which ones we like, which ones we don’t, and which are the greatest. Naturally, when summer comes, we see a lot of sequels, prequels, and “reimaginings.” And from all these films comes a question of which film franchise is the best.
To come up with our top 10, we’ve decided that a “franchise” requires at least three films. And we’ve taken the extra step of counting only film franchises that are currently active — even if the franchise doesn’t have a film in production, but plans to carry on. A franchise can be relatively new (like Pirates of the Caribbean) or have decades of experience (“Bond. James Bond”). […]
The Most Popular Movie President of All-Time Is…
It was Ford in a landslide. Nope, not Ford as in Gerald who lost to Jimmy Carter, but Ford as in Harrison who walked away with our Movie Smackdown presidential poll, taking 26.4% of the votes in a ten-man race.
Ford played President James Marshall in the 1997 film, “Air Force One.” Marshall has just gone to Moscow where he’s told the entire world he will not negotiate with terrorists. Then, on the flight home, Russian neo-nationalists hijack Air Force One forcing an ugly decision on Marshall: give in to terrorist demands or sacrifice not only the country’s dignity, but the lives of his wife and daughter. Well, there is one thing in his favor. He’s a military guy, a winner of the Medal of Honor, and he’s going to fight back.
Apparently we liked this version of the Marshall Plan a lot because when given ten of the top performances by an actor as a president to choose from, our Movie Smackdown voters gave a clear and convincing mandate to Harrison Ford. Here’s our results:
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Alien Invasion poll: The results are in!
Last year here at Movie Smackdown we got the idea to see what readers thought was the Best Alien Invasion Film of All Time. We thought that the genre really broke down into two sections […]
The Results of Our 2009 Sci-Fi Poll
With the Oscars done, we close down our Movie Smackdown poll about what was the Best Sci-Fi Film of 2009. It was a good year for sci-fi respect in that two of the ten Academy-nominated […]
And the Smacky Goes To…
This year’s poll of the Oscar favorites attracted hundreds of our most intelligent readers (see how much we’re willing to pander to those activists?) and they have spoken. We asked them not to vote for the film they think will win but for the film they think should win. They’ve given us a statistical tie between…
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Writers Guild Award Winners Declared Early!
Okay, well, not officially. You won’t hear the actual words, “And the award goes to…” until Saturday night, February 20 when the WGA kudofest hosted by Seth MacFarlane takes place. No, we’re talking about the […]
Valentine’s Day (2010) -vs- Love Actually (2003) -vs- Amelie (2001)
“Valentine’s Day.” From everything I’ve seen and heard, I’m fairly certain that Garry Marshall is a very nice man, and I know he set out with the best of intentions making this film as did all his friends and associates who helped. No one ever intends to make a bad movie, and smacking this film feels a little like hitting a puppy. This movie sits there humping your leg, blissfully unaware and unashamed of the giant stinking turd it’s left on the cineplex screen. To extend the metaphor past all usefulness, this puppy hasn’t yet been spayed. It takes major cojones (or perhaps hubris) to engage such a weak, ungifted and unsuited company of players in hopes of recapturing the success of “Love Actually.” With a few major exceptions, the actors just plain aren’t good enough to rise above the lame material; most are unable to land any of the marginal jokes or even to remind us of any human beings we’ve met.
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